These are my personal choices based on:
- how each composer's music affects me emotionally, regardless of what I or others think of the particular movies or other media production in question;
- their ability to score a broad range of totally unique, totally different "soundscapes" from movie to movie, despite having an identifiable signature sound;
- the degree to which their music complements what appears on screen, assisting in telling the film's story.
Enjoy!
1. John Williams
In my books, no one could touch Sir Boston Pops for the longest time, my earliest childhood memories steeped as they were in the soundtracks for Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jaws, Superman and E.T. (Never mind Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, Harry Potter, and the gagillion other megafilms his star would get hitched to over the years. I mean, just who does this guy think he is, the twentieth century's Mozart?) And while his scores occasionally resemble Eddy Van Halen's guitar licks - indisputably cool and beyond his peers, yet so convoluted as to grate on the nerves - he is still the undisputed king of the hill.
2. Hans Zimmer
If anyone can give Williams a run for his money, though, it's this guy. Three things stand out immediately. One, he (or one of his many cohort-proteges from
Remote Control Productions) seems to do the music for EVERYTHING. Movies, TV, video games, you name it. (I smell a monopoly.) Two, his ability to create entirely unique music each time out of the gate is apparently limitless. Three, he's remarkably unfettered by any specific style or genre. Don't know what I mean? Just listen to the utterly-unlike-each-other scores for
Driving Miss Daisy,
The Lion King,
Gladiator,
Matchstick Men,
The Dark Knight, and
The Ring, one after the other. Dude's not human.
3. Alexander Desplat
France's best modern composer threatened to dethrone both Williams and Zimmer in my pantheon when he rifled off a barrage of soaring (and Oscar-nominated) scores in less than a decade: Girl With a Pearl Earring, Syriana, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, The King's Speech, The Tree of Life, Moonrise Kingdom, Argo, Zero Dark Thirty. When I'm writing a script, searching for inspiration for my own scores, or simply want to sit and contemplate existence, Desplat is my go-to sound guru.
4. James Horner
From Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan forward, I was a confirmed Horner-Dog. Though his liberal use of tubular bells and rise-and-fall string runs sometimes make his scores feel a little samey at times (compare Khan with Titanic and Braveheart), he's still near the top of his game after nearly four decades in the saddle. (And he has the distinction of writing my all-time favourite score for Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind.)
5. Thomas Newman
Like Zimmer, he's done it all for a long, long time and it just keeps getting better and better, from 1984's Reckless to last year's Skyfall. Newman is a bottomless well. And again like Zimmer, he seems as comfortable with a synthesizer as he does with an orchestra. I mean, this guy did Revenge of the Nerds, Desperately Seeking Susan, and Less Than Zero, then followed up with The Shawshank Redemption, American Beauty, and The Green Mile before moving on to Finding Nemo, Wall-E, The Adjustment Bureau, Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and TV's The Newsroom. Come on!
6. Danny Elfman
Tim Burton's fave virtuoso didn't have a clue how to write music after he left the quirly 80's band, Oingo Boingo. But he figured it out and after Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands and The Nightmare Before Christmas (just to name a few Burton classics), he took on serious stuff like Delores Claiborne, Good Will Hunting, and Red Dragon before returning to his gothic fairy tale roots with Big Fish, Spiderman, Hellboy 2, Hitchcock, and the upcoming Oz, The Great and Powerful. No other composer has simultaneously inspired me and freaked me out quite like Elfman. (Well, except maybe for Christopher Young. See #12.)
7. Rachel Portman
It's no secret that there aren't nearly enough celebrated female composers in Hollywood. Whatever the reasons exactly, I know they're out there somewhere (Lisa Gerrard, Anne Dudley and Shirley Walker come to mind) and wish them well. At the top of the list is Portman, whose scores for A Little Princess, Chocolat, The Cider House Rules, The Manchurian Candidate, Never Let Me Go, and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan dance, play and elicit tears that could fill an ocean. I'm a kid again every time I hear one of her plaintiff violins or hopeful flutes. She just kills me.
8. James Newton Howard
Hans Zimmer's prolific right-hand man seems to have hit the sweet spot when it comes to opportunities for scoring for both high concept and high art. With over a hundred films under his belt, Howard takes his role as musical storyteller seriously, knowing exactly what to put where to maximize the full-sensory impact of the films he's connected to. For me, it all started with Glengarry Glenn Ross, but his career was in swing for a full decade before that. Then came Falling Down, The Fugitive, Wyatt Earp, Outbreak, Primal Fear, The Devil's Advocate, The Sixth Sense (and all things Shyamalan), I Am Legend, Blood Diamond, The Dark Knight (with Zimmer), It's Complicated, The Hunger Games, The Bourne Legacy. . .sheesh, I could be here all day!
9. Howard Shore
By the time The Lord of the Rings came out, I'd been enjoying Shore's scores for years without realizing it. Very sneaky, Mr. Shore. And I call myself a David Cronenberg fan! Yes, he's laid down tracks for every one of the Canadian director's films from The Brood to A Dangerous Method, but along the way he somehow also managed to work in The Silence of the Lambs, Mrs. Doubtfire, Philadelphia, Seven, That Thing You Do!, High Fidelity, The Cell, Gangs of New York, Hugo and, of course, The Hobbit. Like Horner, he does tend to repeat himself on occasion, but few composers have been able to pull off the range of musical styles represented in his impressive, Oscar-winning resume.
10. Ennio Morricone
You don't mess with the legend who did The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and live to tell the tale. No, I don't mean Clint Eastwood. I'm talking about the iconic Italian composer who was born in 1928, has scored for over 500 film and TV productions, and is still scoring films as we speak! (What is the musical equivalent of Viagra? Whatever it is, I'll take two.) Even his works familiar to North American audiences speak for themselves (and I'm skipping literally hundreds of movies to get there): Days of Heaven, La Cage Aux Folles, The Thing, Once Upon A Time in America, The Mission, The Untouchables, Frantic, Casualties of War, Hamlet, Bugsy, City of Joy, Lolita, Bulworth, and Malena.
11. Clint Mansell
The former lead singer of UK band Pop Will Eat Itself buddied up with Trent Reznor in the late 90s before landing two back-to-back gigs with director Darren Aronofsky on Pi and Requiem for a Dream (the latter with the Kronos Quartet). After this, came Suspect Zero, The Fountain, Smokin' Aces, Definitely, Maybe, Black Swan, Moon, and the video game, Mass Effect 3. For sheer cool factor, innovation, and mood, Mansell makes my list.
12. Christopher Young
Few composers apply ice directly to my skeleton like Mr. Young. Here's why: Hellraiser, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, Flowers in the Attic, The Fly 2, Species, Copycat, Urban Legend, The Grudge, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, The Uninvited and Drag Me To Hell. (To be fair, he's also had his fair share of solid dramas, including Hard Rain, The Hurricane, Wonder Boys, The Shipping News, and Runaway Jury.) You'd think I'd have his formula for inducing fear figured out by now. Starting with a few safe, melancholic chords designed to lull one into a false sense of security, there suddenly cascades from the darkness a terrifying barrage of discordant strings that pretty much makes you want to run for your life. Gets me every time. Gawd!
13. Harry Gregson-Williams
Two things surprised me about 2007`s sleeper hit, Gone Baby Gone: that Ben Affleck directed it (great comeback, Sir Gigli) and the haunting score by another Zimmer disciple. As with Howard Shore, I'd dug his music for some time without knowing his name in great films like Smila's Sense of Snow, The Replacement Killers, Shrek, Veronica Guerin, Domino, and The Chronicles of Narnia. He followed up Gone, Baby, Gone with The Taking of Pelham 123, Prince of Persia, and Afleck's next hit, The Town. His music was my constant soundtrack throughout film school. Great stuff to write to.
14. Carter Burwell
New York City boy and former cartoonist, Burwell's quirky scores have helped the Coen Brothers deliver cinematic goodies like Blood Simple, Fargo, Burn After Reading, and True Grit. Filling the spaces between were The Hudsucker Proxy, Rob Roy, Conspiracy Theory, Gods and Monsters, Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, In Bruges, The Kids Are Alright, A Serious Man and Seven Psychopaths. And I'm just getting started.
15. A.R. Rahman
Before this veteran, internationally-celebrated Indian composer came to the attention of North America thanks to a little film called Slumdog Millionaire, he was already dubbed "the Mozart of Madras". A master at synthesizing the sounds of east and west, his unique dramatic style earned him a gig on the critically-acclaimed (and Oscar-nominated) 127 Hours, even as he continued to score film after film in Bollywood. Slumdog continues to be one of my all-time favourite soundtracks, but don't stop there. There's plenty more where that came from.
16. Maurice Jarre
Sadly gone four years now, Jarre was another legend with a resume chock full of seminal work as influential and engaging in 1999's Sunshine as it was in 1962's Lawrence of Arabia. In between, he scored dozens of classic films including Doctor Zhivago, Gambit, The Man Who Would Be King, TV's Jesus of Nazareth, The Year of Living Dangerously, A Passage to India, Witness, Fatal Attraction, Dead Poets Society, Ghost, Jacob's Ladder, and the Jeff Bridges masterpiece, Fearless. Though hardly a classic, I must add Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, simply because I was 15 at the time and thought the movie rocked! Thank you, Mr. Jarre. You are truly missed.
17. Vangelis
With only a few films to his credit (though many more albums besides), Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou (please, call him Vangelis) nonetheless changed forever the way movies would incorporate music. In the early 80s, synthesizers were largely relegated to the few New Wave bands who dared to pass them off as "legitimate" instruments and the resulting sound as "legitimate" music. You certainly didn't use them as the musical backbone for a serious, mainstream Hollywood film. Then came Vangelis' Academy Award-winning score for Chariots of Fire (1981) and electronica was off to the races. He followed up with the infinitely-praiseworthy soundtrack for Blade Runner, then receded slowly on the horizon with Mask, 1492, and Oliver Stone's critical bomb, Alexander. But not without leaving a permanent mark on film for which every composer since has been eternally grateful.
18. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross
Sure they've only scored a couple of major Hollywood movies (not including Reznor`s work on Seven and Ross's on Book of Eli), but those movies were The Social Network and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo! You don't even have to be a Nine Inch Nails fan to enjoy and appreciate Reznor's genius here, although it doesn't hurt. In terms of capturing texture and tone to help convey the essence of a films' story, while at the same time presenting something we've never heard before, no one beats these guys who in their industrial, John Cage-y prime.
19. Cliff Martinez
Where has this guy been all my life? Maybe it's because his music sits so perfectly in the background, stealthily creating mood and ambiance without ever getting in the way, that I was able to overlook his music. At least until I was T-boned by his hypnotic score for 2011's Drive, (which quickly became my "Saturday Night Fever strut" music to and from school - paint can, not included). Check out any or all of the following: Sex, Lies and Videotape, Pump Up The Volume, The Limey, Traffic, Narc Solaris, Contagion, Arbitrage, and The Company You Keep.
20. Air
One of my favourite bands ever, France's Air has been pumping out masterpieces since the late 90s, including Premiers Symptomes, Moon Safari, 10,000 Hertz Legend, and Talkie Walkie. Though they've only scored one film to date, Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides, that soundtrack remains one of the coolest around.
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Honourable Mention:
Of course, I'll be pummeled by my closest friends if I don't include some of the following out of sheer respect (especially landmark composers like Bernard Herman, Jerry Goldsmith, Philip Glass, Nino Rota, and the Bernsteins). So without further ado, here are a host of others that could have easily made my list of 20 faves (by last name, not importance), but for whom there simply wasn't room:
Craig Armstrong, Tyler Bates, John Barry, Elmer Bernstein, Leonard Bernstein, Terrence Blanchard, Ludovic Bource, John Brion, Mychael Danna, The Chemical Brothers, Bill Conti, John Debney, Ramin Djawadi, Tan Dun, Clint Eastwood, Peter Gabriel, Michael Giacchino, Elliot Goldenthal, Bernard Herman, Jerry Goldsmith, Philip Glass, Jonny Greenwood, Nicholas Hooper, Alberto Iglesias, Mark Isham, Jonsi, David Julyan, Shim Hyun Jung, Jan Kaczmarek, Abel Korzeniowski, Jesper Kyd, Paul Leonard-Morgan. Henry Mancini, Alan Menken, Javier Navarrete, Randy Newman, John Ottman, John Powell, Daft Punk, Max Richter, Graham Reynolds, Nino Rota, Garry Schyman, Edward Shearmur, Jeremy Soule, Yann Tiersen, Gabriel Yared, and Marcelo Zarvos.
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